Braintree’s Highland-March goes upscale

Thursday

Mar 27, 2008 at 12:01 AMMar 27, 2008 at 7:30 PM

A.J. Bauer

Highland-March Executive Suites in Braintree is about to get an upgrade.

The company, which provides turnkey furnished office spaces and business services, will move this weekend from its old location — 18,000 square feet spread throughout four floors at 140 Wood Road in Braintree — to 20,000 square feet of space on the second floor at 25 Braintree Hill Office Park.

“For a while, the building we were in seemed fine,” said Leslie Libeskind, Highland-March’s president and CEO. “Then we discovered the inefficiencies of being on four floors, and it just wasn’t as nice a building as we wanted to be in — it didn’t say, ‘executive.’” Libeskind said the move represents an upgrade from “Class B” office space to “Class A.” It allows Highland-March to offer its clients more onsite amenities, Libeskind said, such as a cafeteria, fitness center and day care center.

“It’s almost a way of thanking the clients who have been with us for a long time and saying to them, ‘Let’s all enjoy an upgrade,’” she said.

The upgrade, however, isn’t free.

Libeskind said she expects the total cost of the relocation to be from $700,000 to $800,000. The higher-quality space will also require Highland-March to increase the fees it charges to rent one or more of its 48 individual offices by about 15 percent, Libeskind said.

The Braintree location is the company’s flagship, which Libeskind took over when she purchased the company in 1996. Highland-March now has two locations in Braintree and Mansfield that are owned and operated by Libeskind and her daughter Kim, as well as separately owned but affiliated locations in Westboro and Beverly.

The Braintree relocation follows the expansion last year of Highland-March’s Mansfield location from 9,000 to 21,000 square feet.